Knight Life, Update 2 and Episode 4, Life on Mars US

I've finally hit page 160 in Knight Life, and I'm still having trouble getting deeply into the book.  I'll read a few pages here and there, but I'm not finding myself hunkered down for hours in the evening with a low light burning until the wee hours so I can finish before I go to sleep.  I spent many days like this in middle school, reading late into the night when I should have been sleeping by the glowing blue and pink neon light of my telephone (my only excuse for the phone was that it was the mid-nineties).  I'm going to try and make some progress tonight, and with any luck I'll have a more complete wrap-up of the book in a few days.

In more entertaining news, I made it to episode four of the U.S. Life on Mars.  There will be some spoilers for the episode ahead, so if you're trying to stay away from them before watching, turn back now...

This should have been my first clue as to seeing the WTF ending coming.  Let me see if I can recount my reaction from the first time I saw this scene, way back in the fall of 2008.

Sam Tyler: "Hey, Annie, would you mind getting Rose (Sam’s mother) a cup of coffee?"

Me: Hey, come on, her name’s supposed to be Ruth! (Sam’s mom’s name in the original series)

*pause*

Me: Waitasec…  Rose?  Rose Tyler?  SERIOUSLY?

*cue cracking up and me sending text messages to my Whofan friends*

For those of you who don’t know, Rose Tyler was a major character in the 2005 revival of Doctor Who.  She was also the character that Sam Tyler in the UK series was named after (one of the writers of the show asked his kid for a last name for the character of Sam.  The kid tossed out Tyler after the DW character and the rest is history).  Given that Doctor Who has been covering space and time travel since 1963, I’d say that’s a pretty big clue to where they decided to take the ending.  And I’m an idiot for missing it the first time around, especially considering my great love for Doctor Who.  I have my own TARDIS.  'Nuff said.

So is Windy supposed to be a replacement for Nelson then?  She’s fun, but she’s no Nelson.  Nelson had some great hidden depths that peeked out occasionally like the Mancunian accent slip-ups.  Not seeing that with Windy so far.